


Chance and Chemistry

by executrix



Category: Blakes7
Genre: AU, M/M, Smarm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-09
Updated: 2011-06-09
Packaged: 2017-10-20 06:27:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happened instead of Blake/Avon</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chance and Chemistry

"I've imagined every bit of him," I said. I mean, if you're going to fall in love with a bloke, why pick on one exactly like you? Might as well just stay home and do it yourself. "Strong moral fiber. Wisdom in his head." I left out the homey aroma of his pipe, Avon was going to get at me badly enough as it was.

"You have wished yourself a commuter-belt Galahad. The breakfast-eating, gray-tunic type."

Well, what did I expect? A round of applause? For his eyes to get all dewy?

In the normal way of things, Avon and I wouldn't even ever have met each other, well not unless he had a safe that someone else wanted inside of. Or the other way around. But as it was, we were thrown together in the holding cell when we were still back on Earth, and a lot more on the London.

"You can laugh all you want," I told him. "But I'll know."

"You'll know at a glance. By the two pair of pants."

I thought that would be the end of that conversation, but a couple of minutes later, he said, as if I would know what he was talking about (and I did) "Mine will come as a surprise to me," he said. "I'll leave it up to chance, and chemistry."

"Chemistry!" I said.

"I don't even know why I mentioned it," he said, all huffy. "Grixby wants a game. Can we get a fourth?"

Avon liked to talk and he liked to play cards, and in fact he had a pukka deck of cards so we could, nobody else had one. At first I thought that there was only one thing any of us had to trade, but what happened is, one of the guards let Avon have the cards because after the guard was whingeing about some problem he was having with the radiators in the quarters for the screws, Avon told him how to fix it.

Funny to think that the guards are locked up here too, they don't get to go home really either. And of course, all those other times, whenever I'd get banged up, they'd let me out sooner or later, there'd be a party for the whole street, Mum making a cake with gumdrops and coconut in the icing and that. And this time I wasn't going home. Ever.

What can't be cured must be endured, eh?

We tried a couple of times to get up a poker school, Avon and me, but it never really worked. You need your partner to be a good player for that. Avon's a rotten poker player, and later on so was Blake, although for opposite reasons. You can tell what's in Blake's hand, just like he put it up on Main Viewerscreen. Avon doesn't give anything away, but it's hilarious to watch him play poker, because a lot of the time he's just sitting there with a pair of fours, and he knows it, and he knows he's just going to have to keep calling and raising anyway. Can't help it.

Now, Jenna. That's a cardplayer for you. One of the best I've ever seen, for a girl. In fact that's where some of the bad blood between her and Avon comes from. He says that we weren't ever really playing for money, but she's seen him collect from Salman and Arco.

When he wanted to be, Avon could be really funny, and believe me, I could use a laugh. My fellow members of the criminal class aren't always good company. And some of them can be positively untrustworthy. Much as it pains me to say it.

Someone told me that he got into trouble because he got mixed up with a bird, well I could believe that looking at him. I've known that sort--girls, boys, pile of rocks with a snake underneath...

I still don't know if he's good-looking, not even after I've had a chance to see over the property, so to speak. Good-looking, now I'll tell you about good-looking. There was this second-storyman called Fenton, six foot three everything built to scale, wavy blond hair flicking up at the ends, shiny teeth as white as the way the freezer gets when you can't be arsed to defrost it for months, needed a place to hide out one week and a couple of nights of it he didn't turf me out of the bed neither. I tell you. The nice part of crisps put together with the best bits of pouring custard.

But that time I was telling you about, we were playing bridge--that's Avon's favorite card game--the two of us and Grixby and Rohrbon, you don't know him, hatcheted a couple-three old ladies for the money they had hid under the floorboards, nice bloke--and Avon'd just been dealt out, he walked away from us and left us to the hand. Three no trump.

There was a bit of a stir, the big main gate opened, and they brought another prisoner in. Well, they thought they were dragging him in, looked to us more like Blake had a train or was the parade marshal like.

The noise was the end of Avon's walkabout. And he stopped. And he stared. At that face.

Vulnerable, doubled and redoubled.

2\.   
After I'd been on what turned out to be the Liberator for a couple of days, I ran into Avon in the corridor. I put my hand on his arm--well, nobody could object to that even if they saw it, could they? Blokes can touch each other on the arm. "You came back for me," I said.

"Vila," he said, shaking off my hand. "Get your head screwed on the right way round. I didn't come back for you. Blake did. If it was up to me, I'd be sitting on an uninhabited planet on a pile of rose petals counting money and waiting for the furniture to get delivered."

It was an inspiring sight, watching Avon's face light up like that twice a row, really fast. Talking about Blake and talking about himself. But it didn't really do me any good, did it?

3.

I've never quite made up my mind, why what didn't happen, didn't happen. Basically my theory is that Blake's straight, but he could just be married to this rebellion lark. Or he just likes a smaller helping of aggro with his greens.

I was always afraid that sooner or later Avon would wear him down, but before that happened, Avon did something that startled me. The area where I'm the expert and could give him lessons.

He gave up.

4.

I was in a good mood that afternoon (I suppose it was afternoon, it felt like it, and we hadn't had tea yet), feeling all happy about being able to out-stroll the bastards, when Blake sent it all crashing back down.

"Up until now we've only been a minor irritation to the Federation. I think it's about time we hurt them."

Well, even Jenna didn't like the sound of that, and we hadn't met Cally yet so she wasn't there to stamp her feet and whistle through her fingers.

Avon was sitting pressed back against the back of his seat, one hand on his hip. There's no justice, is there? When he's really scared, he looks like a prince on his throne. I just look like I've been dipped in green paint.

"I thought it was agreed we wouldn't do anything without discussing it thoroughly," he said.

And Blake told him, "True. It was also agreed that anybody could opt out at any time."

Bloody hell! That was a direct shot over the bows of my life expectancy--having recently been promoted from annoying little petty crook to Most Wanted Rebel. Not as if I could just step off the Liberator and ride off into the sunset, was it?

"Just tell me when you want to leave," Blake said.

It took Avon a moment to answer him, it takes time to fall out of love, not that I bet Blake ever knew what was really happening.

"Oh, I will," Avon said. "But in the meantime I think we have a right to know what it is you're planning."

And it made me feel good to think that that "we" meant Avon was looking out for me.

5.  
Then things got busy again, well you know how they do, what with homicidal maniacs stomping about in naff sandals and aliens dressed up like a chicken paprikash.

And then when it calmed down Avon walked past me when I was going off watch and he was coming on. "Vila," he said. It was always a treat to watch Avon being casual, like going over to someone's house and they pull a six-tier wedding cake and a smoking-hot suckling pig out of the larder and apologize cos there's nothing about the place. "I seem to have heard, oh, a few thousand times, that you maintain some sort of opinion about our being together."

"Yeh," I said hopelessly.

And, "I agree," Avon said, over his shoulder.

 _"I'll know,  
As I run to his arms,  
That at last,   
I've come home,  
Safe and sound." _ (From "Guys and Dolls")


End file.
